Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/352

 J4 HISTORY OF GREECE. each with its constituent demes, had become a part of the estab- lished habits of the country, and the citizens had become accus- tomed to exercise a genuine and self-determined decision in their assemblies, political as well as judicial; while even the senate of Areopagus, renovated by the nine annual archons successively chosen who passed into it after their year of office, had also be- come identified in feeling with the constitution of Kleisthenes. Individual citizens, doubtless, remained partisans in secret, and perhaps correspondents of Hippias ; but the mass of citizens, in every scale of life, could look upon his return with nothing but terror and aversion. With what degree of newly-acquired energy the democratical Athenians could act in defence of their country and institutions, has already been related in a former chapter ; though unfortunately we possess few particulars of Athenian his- tory during the decade preceding 490 B.C., nor can we follow in detail the working of the government. The new form, however, which Athenian politics had assumed becomes partially manifest, when we observe the three leaders who stand prominent at this important epoch, Miltiades, Themistokles, and Aristeides. The first of the three had returned to Athens, three or four years before the approach of Datis, after six or seven years' ab- sence in the Chersonesus of Thrace, whither he had been origi- nally sent by Hippias about the year 517-516 B.C., to inherit th<3 property as well as the supremacy of his uncle the cekist Miltia- des. As despot of the Chersonese, and as one of the subjects of Persia, he had been among the lonians who accompanied Darius to the Danube in his Scythian expedition, and he had been the author of that memorable recommendation which Histi- oeus and the other despots did not think it their interest to follow, of destroying the bridge and leaving the Persian king to perish. Subsequently, he had been unable to remain permanently in the Chersonese, for reasons which have before been noticed ; yet he seems to have occupied it during the period of the Ionic revolt. 1 1 The chapter of Herodotus (vi, 40) relating to the adventures of Mil tiades is extremely perplexing, as I have already remarked in a former tote : and Wesseling considers that it involves chronological difficulties which our present MSS. do not enable us to clear up. Neither Schweig* hauler, nor the explanation cited in Bihr's note, is satisfactory'